So I bought an Obsidian after the last NewEgg sale and immediately began to tear it down and mod it.
Mods are fairly tame at this point but I have some more ideas in store.
First mod I did was remove the stock artwork from the stock plexi. To do this I got a shallow tray big enough for the plexi to sit and then poured nail polish remover onto the tray (only enough to cover the tray).
The idea here is to lay the plexi art side down onto a thin layer of nail polish remover. Wait a few seconds wipe off the artwork. You will need to wash down the plexi afterwards and might get some slight hazing.
For the hazing I used a combo of Meguirs (sp?) scratchX and headlight polish. Came out clear enough for me (your results will vary).
I decided to keep the plexi screw covers, so I used a small hook to pick out the covers. It looks like its just hot glued onto the screws.
While inside the box, I was a little disappointed with the wiring and it made figuring out how my first stick actually works. So since I needed to disconnect the wires anyways I decided to heat shrink and loom them.
I also am not a fan of the led side pieces (big metal chunks with the barely visible leds). So I removed them completely, at the cost of some weight.
The biggest mod was getting rid of that usb cable. I hate opening that compartment PITA and also would like to just have a quick connect for whatever cables. So I picked up a USB 3.0 panel mounted extender, probably would have been easier to just get a 2.0 USB panel but didn't really see any that fit the bill.
Used a 3/4" spade bit to cut out a perfect circle where the Qanba logo is (sorry Qanba!). It sits raised above the already protruding metal logo, not too thrilled with that but it works. I probably could have want back with a 1/2" spade and cut about half way into the metal to make the plug recessed. Future goal is to probably replace that piece altogether with a square of plexi.
The USB extender was stripped on one end and the stock Qanba usb cable stripped as well (on the JST connector side). Match the wires up (red - red, black - black, etc). Qanba's usb uses 5 pins, a little digging revealed that the other "black" wire is and ID wire? it looks like the two black wires are soldered together under the heatshrink which has me suspect that's what that wire is. I soldered to the actual black wire, the other "black" wire was slightly off-colored.
Last piece was some custom art. I didn't have any large enough paper available so I had an old poster with a box set I had gotten a while back and used that (shout out to all the Tokyo Ghoul fans out there).
Anyway, I this is the first part of a series of mods I'm planning. All in all wasn't too bad of an experience.
tldr; Bought and modded my first stick. Here are the pics: https://imgur.com/a/5db87kf
Submitted June 21, 2019 at 08:49PM by Here_ya_go http://bit.ly/31Mq3Ql
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